Tagged: logic

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. Deuteronomy 10:17

God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. Psalms 82:1

There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours.Psalms 86:8

And the king shall do as he wills. He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak astonishing things against the God of gods. He shall prosper till the indignation is accomplished; for what is decreed shall be done. Daniel 11:36

Recently, I brought up the fact that modern Christians are polytheists. On the one hand, they believe in the God of the Bible and on the other, the so-called god of philosophers or as they would put it, the god of monotheism. A commenter on my post over on WordPress brought up the fact that the early Jews were polytheists. He provided a number of verses like the ones above. I responded to him and stated that Christians have a go-to copout. They’ll argue that this is merely a recognition that people at the time worshipped other gods, gods that were mere idols. That, however, demonstrates that they are either ignorant of historical context or they know of the context and yet ignore it. We can discuss the polytheistic origins of Judaism further, but that’s not my purpose here.

My purpose here is to debase the notion of a god of (mono)theism, to disrupt that convenient narrative. A Christian on Facebook recently offered an ontological argument he confused with Godel’s Ontological Argument. That wasn’t the argument he offered. He offered another ontological argument in where ‘God’ could be replaced with ‘Allah’ or ‘Ahura Mazda’ and the result wouldn’t change. Two other people then responded and said that the refutation fails because the argument sets out to prove the god of monotheism.

The god of (mono)theism, as William Lane Craig posits, is timeless, personal, omniscient, and so on. I’ll set exegesis aside because there are ways to prove otherwise given passages in the Bible (e.g. why did god ask Adam questions in Genesis 3 if he’s omniscient?). What I want to offer instead is a new argument against the notion of a so-called god of (mono)theism. We know from mathematics that there are different infinities. Since infinity is already a large value, if we can even call it such, there’s no way for the human mind to apprehend one infinity or another, let alone distinguish them. So given that line of thinking, there’s an element of vagueness we can introduce to debase the notion of a god of (mono)theism.

Take, for instance, timelessness. A Christian will posit that their god has no beginning; he’s eternal and exists outside of time. All well and good. Let’s say there’s another being who had a beginning outside of the universe billions of years ago, e.g., Satan. What disqualifies this being from being timeless as well, especially given that we can’t ascertain the beginning of this being’s existence? In other words, if god is present at point 0 and then Satan at point 0.00000005, what difference is there? There are some beginnings that result in a virtual eternity and so, just like there are different infinities, there are different eternities, different versions of timelessness.

The same goes for omniscience. What if there’s a being that knows all things except one thing; let’s suppose this being doesn’t know how to play billiards. What is the difference between an omniscient being who knows all things and another being who knows all things save the required know-how to play billiards? Again, as there are different infinities, there are different levels of omniscience and we simply wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a being who knows everything and one who knows everything except for how to play billiards.

Omnipotence, omnipresence, the capacity to be personal, and so on, all fall victim to vagueness, and as such, the same defeater that exists for Godel’s Ontological Argument, namely that parallel arguments work just as well (see Oppy 1996), also exists for the notion of the so-called god of monotheism. There is no such entity. It is logically possible that, given vagueness, there are millions of beings that fit the description. However, one should not draw ontological conclusions on the basis of logical considerations. Just because there could be a million such beings doesn’t mean they actually exist; likewise, just because one such being is logically possible doesn’t mean it actually exists. The god that apologetic arguments allude to is a product of Christian obfuscation.

Given that Christians are overly fond of deductive arguments, I will do my best to formulate an Argument From Vagueness, which isn’t necessarily an argument on its own. Let’s consider Plantinga’s Victorious Ontological Argument:

A being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and

A being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.

It is possible that there is a being that has maximal greatness.

Therefore, possibly, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being exists.

Therefore, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.

Now, consider a parallel Argument from Vagueness. D1 is crucial to the argument.

D1: A being with maximal excellence* has omnipotence* (which is to be so close to all-powerful that its lone incapacity is negligible; it once failed to push a universe to the left), omniscience* (which is to be virtually all-knowing; it doesn’t know how to play billiards), and perfectly good* (which is to be virtually morally perfect, but it once told a white lie). Maximal greatness* is to have maximal excellence* across all possible worlds.

A being has maximal excellence* in a given possible world W iff it is omnipotent*, omniscient*, and wholly good* in W.

A being has maximal greatness* if it has maximal excellence* in every possible world.

It is possible that there is a being that has maximal greatness*.

Therefore, possibly, it is necessarily true that an omniscient*, omnipotent*, and perfectly good* being exists.

Therefore, it is necessarily true that an omniscient*, omnipotent* and perfectly good* being exists.

Once this counter-argument is offered, what a Christian has left is the bare assertion that a being with maximal excellence* isn’t truly god because it has negligible limitations. The question remains: how do we know that the purported attributes of god are true? It is, as it will always be, a matter of faith. There is no way to ascertain that god is eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient. We can ask whether he is perfectly moral, but that’s a separate issue entirely. The thrust that Arguments From Vagueness drive is that there’s no justification for speaking of any infinity with such certainty. There may be an infinity so near to the one a theist reveres that the differences are negligible. That’s precisely what these arguments are designed for.

I wrote the following in response to a Muslim on a New York Times opinion piece on Facebook. Everyone who discusses the actions of the Judeo-Christian and/or Muslim gods focuses far too much on the moral and legal ramifications of said actions. No one realizes that, per the theist, their god is perfectly logical. As such, the logical dimension of an action attributed to this god has to be captured. With that in mind, I offered the following.

Even if punishing children for the crimes of their parents is either moral or legal, though we haven’t apprehended that as of yet, there’s still the issue that it isn’t logical. Logic is a priori and therefore, logic for humans is logic for the god of monotheism. Just as we can’t make a round square or sided circle, neither can god. Per the philosophically inclined theist, the laws of logic, as an extension of his creative power, are part of him and as such, he can’t violate his own nature. As such, god would be perfectly logical and would thus reason perfectly, which means he wouldn’t commit logical fallacies. Given that, he wouldn’t commit an act that’s based in the fallacy of guilt by association. To punish a child for their parents crimes is exactly that! God would be finding someone guilty do to their association or more specifically, their relation to a sinner.

To my mind, this is the ultimate defeater because it should be clear that the Judeo-Christian and Muslim gods have acted on the basis of fallacious logic. It would make more sense that such actions are the actions of people who wished to attribute said actions to a god, perhaps for sake of justifying their actions and attempting to spare themselves any guilt they might have felt. Clearly, however, a perfectly logical god wouldn’t base any of its actions on fallacious logic. The doctrine of original sin, for instance, is itself based on guilt by association. So even if a Christian fails to see the moral failing in such a doctrine, they would have to concede that there’s certainly a logical failing.

As is commonplace when discussing religion, there’s always someone who will disagree, either because they’re religious or are agnostics who favor belief over non-belief. This individual contended that the soundness of informal fallacies is established a posteriori rather than a priori. He also stated that god might have written guilt into our DNA and that therefore, it is heritable. I found that both of these contentions neither change my argument nor succeed at defeating it.

The reason for this is because I don’t think that every informal fallacy’s soundness is determined a posteriori. If soundness is reached via reason, and I see no reason to add an empirical dimension to determine the soundness of an informal fallacy, then that is also a priori. Even still, however, a perfectly logical being wouldn’t reason fallaciously, let alone base his actions on fallacious reasoning. Even if inherited guilt was built into our DNA, which no empirical research has shown, there’s still a logical issue with making a child pay for their parents sins. So even if I somehow inherit the guilt of my mother’s marital infedility, that doesn’t mean that I should pay the price for her adultery.

Collective guilt, for example, is a thing. I am, for instance, ashamed of my country’s actions. I am American and at the moment and for practically my whole life, I haven’t been proud to be one. I feel guilty being a citizen of a country that murdered millions of Native Americans and stripped them of their lands, allowed slavery, incarcerated Japanese citizens in internment camps, and incarcerates rates Blacks and Latinos disproportionately in comparison to other ethnic groups — aside from the many other human rights infractions this country has committed. That, however, does not mean that I should pay the price for American crimes. While some people may be perfectly content to make me pay on the basis of guilt by association (i.e. well, he’s an American, so his arrest or death is good enough for me!), a perfectly logical being simply should not and would not be content with passing such a sentence. It isn’t logical, just, or moral, but alas, the Judeo-Christian and Muslim gods are said to behave accordingly. If a theist or an agnostic who favors theism is reluctant to admit that there are moral or legal failings in the actions of these theistic gods, they must admit that there are clear logical failings in their actions. That poses yet another problem in a long list of problems for theism.

In the past, I’ve argued that the laws of logic can be challenged or even violated. A response to my post on procedural realism and the Moral Argument mentioned that the laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction have been challenged by analytic philosophers. I found it curious that there was no mention of a challenge to the law of identity, since I think it’s the most easily challenged.

In order to challenge the law of identity, one need only challenge its underlying assumption, namely essentialist ontology. “The essentialist tradition, in contrast to the tradition of differential ontology, attempts to locate the identity of any given thing in some essential properties or self-contained identities” (see here). According to modern physics, as it now stands, all objects are atoms in flux and empty space. Where then is the atomic glue that holds a table or chair together and how does one differentiate between two chairs that look precisely alike without presupposing the essentialist tradition?

The essentialist tradition begs the question when concerning identity, since there’s no way to prove that any one object has essential properties. Interestingly, the reason for presupposing the essentialist tradition might have everything to do with personal identity. People are animate objects, but objects nonetheless. Without essentialism, we can no longer assume that we have a distinct identity. Physically, we are atoms in flux and empty space as well and thus, what we’re left with are second order grounds for personal identity. In other words, we can avoid talk of atoms and empty space and instead look to DNA, neurons, brain anatomy, and so on. In this way we retain our uniqueness without first order grounds.

That aside, if we instead argue from the basis of differential ontology, the law of identity is no longer as unassailable as it appeared. As stated, we would rely on second order grounds. “Differential ontology…understands the identity of any given thing as constituted on the basis of the ever-changing nexus of relations in which it is found, and thus, identity is a secondary determination, while difference, or the constitutive relations that make up identities, is primary.” We would therefore ignore notions of a stable identity and instead look to differences between objects.

Given this, the law of identity (A = A) will be replaced with the law of distinction, i.e., something like A =/= B or C or D and so on. Since A is not B or C or D, then we identify A because it is contrasted with objects in relation to it. We are no longer assuming that there are essential properties that make A, A. This is, after all, what we say of ourselves. We do not say I am me because I have essential characteristics. Instead we contrast ourselves with others; we factor in physical appearance, ethnicity, gender, personality, and so on. We then add other factors like level of income and education, personal tastes, and so on. Clearly none of these characteristics are essential.

Ultimately, the law of identity is not unassailable and can be challenged by uprooting its essentialist assumption. One way of doing so is by positing differential ontology. One can, however, do so by positing human consciousness. In other words, another traditional philosophical assumption (contra-pragmatism) is that there’s a deeper reality that goes beyond our everyday experience; perhaps quantum mechanics hints at this. On the basis of this, we cannot draw ontological conclusions on the basis of our faculties. In other words, the four chairs and dining room table in my living room look distinct because my faculties see them as such. In reality, however, there’s nothing but atomic flux and empty space. This is in no way an attempt to undermine the usefulness of our faculties, but if there’s a deeper layer to reality that we cannot capture, then there’s no way we can argue for essential properties. Furthermore, we wouldn’t be able to argue from difference either. We would, in other words, have to assume the accuracy of our faculties in order to argue for a law of identity.